Saturday, December 1, 2012

Shiny Ball Ornament Wreath DIY

Last night a couple local mama friends and I had a glittery craft night to make Christmas ball ornament wreaths.

There are lots of different techniques for this kind of wreath online, but this is how we did it. We worked loosely from this tutorial, but didn't take the caps off our balls.

Our hostess had the bright idea to buy foam tubing from Lowe's for $.96, rather than pre-made foam wreath forms that were closer to $10. Choose the narrower tubes—the thicker tubes kinked a bit. We had no trouble making perfect circles by just eye-balling the length, snipping the tube and duct-taping the ends together.

My form ended up being 14 inches across, and the finished wreath is about 21 inches.

Tie ribbon on before you add the balls so you can hang the wreath when you are done.

I started with the biggest balls inside and outside the ring, fairly randomly, and then just filled in the gaps without much planning.

I used my small $2 low-heat glue gun and probably 10 glue sticks all together.

The majority of my wreath was made out of a $15 box of 50 large shatter-resistant (polystyrene) balls from Target, to which I added similar (but slightly smaller ones) that my generous hostess shared with me from Walmart, and some extra small ones that I also found at target ($3 for 25 pieces).

If I did it again I wouldn't be so sloppy with the glue, which shows more than I thought it would on the finished wreath.

For a wreath of my size I think you need about 40 large, 30 medium, and 20 small balls. Plus one large glass of wine and plenty of girl talk. :)